If this is the second semester of your first year, a belated welcome to the Bay Area! If you have been here a little while, chances are that you have filled out your paperwork to become a California resident, giving up your old state driver’s license and gaining the requisite tuition reduction. Even if you have been here your whole life, how much do you really know about the ground beneath your feet? Who lived in your apartment before you did?
I have to admit that I didn’t feel much of a connection to the Bay Area until relatively recently. I missed my home, where I was familiar with the local history, geology, and native plants and animals. Did you know that nearly half of trees species you see around Berkeley and San Francisco are originally from Australia and New Zealand? I didn’t, until I had a look inside Mike Sullivan’s The Trees of San Francisco, available for check out from the Bioscience and Natural Resources Library. The blue gum eucalyptus grove, native to Australia, contains the tallest trees on campus, indeed the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America.
If you don’t have a lot of interest in the not-so-local plants, take a look at Oakland Geology, a blog dedicated to local geology. Andrew Alden highlights the rocks around town. According to Alden, “every neighborhood in Oakland with a “mont” in its name has bedrock exposed.” You’ll know you’ve got it when you can tell the difference between serpentine and blueshist.
An old Sanborn fire insurance map showing the lay of the land along Shattuck Avenue in 1894
Finally, how old is the building you live in? Was your aging south-side Victorian always chopped up into 12 tiny apartments with hallways for bedrooms? You can do a little detective work by looking up the old Sanborn fire insurance maps, available digitally through the UC Berkeley library. It helps to click on the index first to locate the pages containing the street nearest to you. I found out that my old apartment was built right next to Strawberry Creek before the city moved the stream underground. Also, most street margins on the major thoroughfares around town have trolley tracks underneath them—the Key Route system served most of the East Bay until it was dismantled as part of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. If you happen to live in Oakland, Michael Migurski has done a lot of the heavy cartographic lifting for you at Old Oakland, where you can select and overlay different historical layers.
Welcome to your new home!